Reinventing Africa : Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England

Between 1890 and 1918, British colonial expansion in Africa led to the removal of many valuable African artifacts that were subsequently brought to Britain and displayed.

This fascinating book analyses the ways in which African peoples and their material culture were represented in Britain at this time, the justifications for imperial expansion implicit in the displays, and the effects that this had on racial stereotyping and prejudice.

Annie Coombes argues that this activity had profound repercussions for the construction of a national identity within Britain itself - the effects of which are still with us today.

The author discusses the principal means by which African culture was presented to the British public: ethnographic collections housed in private and state museums; large-scale international and colonial exhibitions, such as the "Stanley and the African" exhibition of 1890; missionary societies and the British and African press treatment of these displays.

Coombes argues that although endlessly reiterated racial stereotypes were disseminated through popular images of all things "African," this was no simple reproduction of imperial ideology. There were a number of different and sometimes conflicting representations of Africa and of what it was to be African - representations that varied according to political, institutional, and disciplinary pressures and to the professionalization of anthropology over this period.

Pioneering in its research, this book offers valuable insights for art and design historians, historians of culture, imperialism, and anthropology, social historians, anthropologists, and museologists.